Users often expect to purchase goods and services on the Internet according to their preferences (e.g., purchasing a good at the best price) securely. However, existing e-commerce platforms often fall short of the customer's expectations. For example, although e-commerce platforms selling goods and services are ubiquitous on the Internet, secure e-commerce platforms are not. E-commerce platforms are often not secure because merchants associated with e-commerce platforms fail to maintain the security of their e-commerce platforms. For example, merchants often fail to upgrade their e-commerce platforms, fix security flaws within their e-commerce platforms, and/or follow a policy of pushing only tested and secure changes of the e-commerce platform to the production environment (e.g., the production environment is where software and other products are actually put into operation for their intended uses by end users).
Moreover, existing e-commerce platforms often do not allow users to purchase goods and services on the Internet according to their preferences. Since most e-commerce platforms sell goods or services from one merchant, users are often deprived of the opportunity to buy goods and services, for example, at the lowest price from a wide array of merchants. And, even if an existing e-commerce platform offers the goods or services from multiple merchants, the e-commerce platform and/or its merchants are often aware of what prices other merchants are selling their goods and services. Thus, the e-commerce platform and/or merchants often collude, for example, to keep the price of a good high. Accordingly, these e-commerce systems may provide less desirable outcomes for users.
In view of these and other shortcomings and problems, a need exists to provide improved systems and techniques that allow users to securely purchase goods and services on the Internet according to their preferences.